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The Fine Art of Textiles

This example of a kimkhab, a heavy silk fabric brocaded in silver and/or gold with colored silk accents, was among the objects exhibited by the India Museum of London at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. It was most likely cut from the same length of cloth as an identical textile in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London that was acquired by the East India Company Museum in 1855 and that is thought to have been shown at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1867. The London example has the name of the craftsman and cloth woven into the fabric. Dilys E. Blum, from The Fine Art of Textiles: The Collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1997), p. 139.